Gemma D. Alexander

ByGD

Iceland, Iceland Airwaves, Icelandic music, music festivals

Live from Reykjavik – Iceland Airwaves at Home

My first trip to Iceland was for the Iceland Airwaves Festival in 2012. It was a lifechanging experience for me for many reasons. It also seemed like a pretty kid-friendly festival, so I came home fully intending to come back another year with my family. And although I’ve made it back to Iceland many times, once with kids in tow, I’ve never managed to catch another Airwaves. During the pandemic lockdown, I realized that my oldest only has one more year of high school, which seems like a deadline for all sorts of family things. I swore to myself that the next time it’s safe to go to Airwaves, I’m taking the whole family no matter what else may be going on. A few days later I saw that Airwaves had gone online with a two-day virtual Live from Reykjavik mini-festival.

How I Roll

One year, I took my mom and my daughters to Victoria for a girls’ weekend getaway. We ended up buying so many books they filled our suitcase and we had to put our clothes in garbage bags on the ferry home.

Two years later, the three of us went to Portland for another weekend. But this was no ordinary girls’ weekend. Portland is home to Powell’s, and this weekend was a pilgrimage.

We spent hours at Powell’s both days we were in town. I spent so much money that the bookseller who rang us up gave us an honorary 10% discount. I spent the entire savings at Powell’s the next day. The receipts from those purchases are more than two feet long and hang above my desk to this day.

But for this trip, I came prepared. I brought a bookcase.

ByGD

Arms, Ghost Variations, Jessica Lang, Michael Wall, Penny Saunders, Susan Marshall, Twyla Tharp, Waterbaby Bagatelles, Wonderland

Rep 2 of PNB’s Digital Season

I almost didn’t watch Rep 2, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s second program of the 2020-2021 digital season. It wasn’t because I didn’t like Rep 1 – quite the opposite. It’s just that Thursday was one of those days when most of what I tried to do didn’t get accomplished and everything I did accomplish took twice as much time and effort as it should have. Maybe it was the crash following a post-election high, but all I wanted to do was go to bed early after watching a feel-good K-drama with a too-tall pour of rye. But I remembered how good Rep 1 was. So I tuned in to the ballet instead and was reminded once again that art is more uplifting than escapist television – even when it’s on the tv.

PNB soloists Elle Macy and Dylan Wald in Jessica Lang’s Ghost Variations, Photo © Lindsay Thomas c/o PNB

Published in October 2020

If you’re an editor looking for my recent work, or if you’re a fan *cough* family member keeping track of everything I write, this is where you’ll find links to all my publications in the past month. It’s also where I report on blog performance and oddities. In October, I helped a local nonprofit with some grant work and had eleven articles published between Earth911.com and ParentMap. The grant applications are not for public consumption, but links to the articles are hot off the press (or hot out of the dryer) below.

Satan’s Bath Water

As a general rule, I think safety culture has gone too far. Or at least I did before the pandemic, when my kids were little and I worked in the public sector. Then it seemed like literally anything, no matter how inane, could be justified with the words, “It’s for safety,” and no one was allowed to question it. But as we’ve learned this year, sometimes there is danger. And it’s only fair to have a warning so we can make informed decisions.

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Live from Reykjavik – Iceland Airwaves at Home